and Jaakko Hintikka, who articulated a partial reconstruction of Sherlock Holmes’ methodology as a prelude to a full-blown logic of discovery. In the early 1980s, it caught the attention of Merill B. This assertion (hereafter, the Popper–Reichenbach thesis), which rallied hypothetico-deductivists and probabilistic inductivists in spite of otherwise opposed views on scientific methodology, resulted in a long-lasting consensus that there can be no ‘logic’ of discovery.Ĭonsequently, Holmes’ “Science of Deduction and Analysis” reflects epistemological and methodological insights suppressed by the Popper–Reichenbach thesis.
Footnote 1 Jevons’ ideas predate by 50 years the discussion of scientific discovery from the 1930s, that came to an abrupt end when Popper ( 1992) and Reichenbach ( 1938) asserted the impossibility of a rational reconstruction of discovery processes. On occasion, Conan Doyle lets Holmes depict this picture, explaining the principles of logic and probability that support his conclusions, and echoing in the fiction the real-world epistemological views of early proponents of George Boole’s ‘new logic’, in particular, Stanley William Jevons (1835–1882). Not only did Conan Doyle model Holmes’ abilities (and attitude) on Bell’s, he also formed his own picture of the “Science of Deduction and Analysis” (as per the title of the second chapter of A Study in Scarlet) that underlies them. Quite easy, gentlemen, if you will only observe and put two and two together.’ (Liebow 1982, p. 135) Then I knew he had to ring the bells to-morrow. Did you not notice the callosities on them caused by the ropes? Also, this is Saturday, and when I asked him if he could not come back on Monday, he said he must be getting home tonight.
What! You didn’t make that out! Did you not notice the Northumbrian burr in his speech, too soft for the south of Northumberland? One only finds it near the Tweed. ‘Ah,’ said Bell, when the outpatient had left bewildered, ‘you all know about that as well as I did. ‘I am all that,’ said the man, ‘but how do you know? I never told you.’ Well do I remember the gasping astonishment of an outpatient to whom suddenly remarked, ‘Of course I know you are a beadle and ring the bells on Sundays at a Church in Northumberland somewhere near the Tweed.’
Liebow’s Joe Bell, Model of Sherlock Holmes (1982), would inspire Holmes’ claims that one can deduce “a man’s calling” from ( inter alia) the calluses on his hands: Ten years later, an episode of Bell’s life, recounted by one Doctor Charles Watson McGillivray and reported in E.
#SHERLOCK HOLMES AND NARRATOR ART OF DEDUCTION QUESTIONS HOW TO#
Bell encouraged his students to draw inferences from observations of their patients and was keen on schooling them on how to do so. In 1877, doctor-in-training Arthur Conan Doyle served as an assistant to Scottish surgeon Joseph Bell (1837–1911) at the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary. ( A Study in Scarlet, I, 2)ĭismissing Holmes’ claims as fiction may be tempting but would be a mistake for he describes real-world skills.
That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable. By a man’s finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boot, by his trouser-knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuffs-by each of these things a man’s calling is plainly revealed. Rom a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.
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